Squawk's 52 2010 - Week 15: single (I'm back)

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Squawk

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The most recent image will always feature in this first post, along with the week name and theme. There will then be a link to that weeks post.

Week 15: Single

52_single-1.jpg



I'm going to give myself the best chance for this to improve my photography, so I'm going to add in the following.

In any given week I will post up my image as soon as possible after it is taken, but I will endeavour to include a couple of others from the set. Depending on feedback for that weeks challenge I may update my choice to another one of the set. The deadline for changing the image will be one week after the end of the challenge and can only be to an image that was posted as part of the set prior to the week ending.

I'm also adding a rule that I will probably break. I will try not to photoshop images to any great extent unless my goal in a given week is actually a photoshop style challenge. Minor tweaks such as exposure adjustments I'm going to allow, but my goal is to capture the real world, not to clone images to make them look perfect. No doubt I will also create "perfect" images for keeping, but for my 52 I want it to be natural for the most part.

Feedback much appreciated. Critique is welcome, I'm looking to use this to improve as much as possible.

Week 1: Curves
Week 2: Poems/Poetry
Week 3: Chopped
Week 4: Street
Week 5: Speed
Week 6: Present
Week 7: people
Week 8: Mechanical
Week 9: Play
Week 15: Single
 
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Week 1: Curves

A very broad subject area. My first thought for the week was to go and do a long exposure of the motorway 10 minutes from where I live, the standard night trails thing that I haven't yet had a go at.

My second thought was to do something mathematical, plot a couple of curves on paper and see if I could do something creative with it. Third was a bike tyre, fourth was something car related.

Then I hit upon the idea of wine glasses back lit by a candle. I thought the light would shine though and make the glasses look fantastic, light curving all over the place. In practice it didn't really work, I'd have needed about 20 candles to get the effect. That said, I liked one of the images, so you will see it in the set below.

Sticking with the same idea I turned the lights back on, arranged a colourful towel around the glasses which were all full of water, got the reflections in the right place and then used onboard flash with a black background (actually a baking tray). Three different takes on that same image. All were shot raw, nothing has been done to any of them other than a straighten of one and a crop. No sharpening, noise reduction etc.


Curved: Final Image
4236961151_dec075a838.jpg


Curved: Candidates

4237736760_73513b85f7.jpg


4236961473_8927de1864.jpg


4236960857_ce7928d653.jpg
 
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very different
I'd never guess they were wine glasses
thought it was a collection of silver wind instruments
good to hear how you took the shots too

you chose the best one to post :clap:

oh - and definitely lots of curves! :thumbs:
 
Thanks for all the nice comments guys. I've taken the step of trimming down the set shots, just leaving the main photo at the top of the thread large. Should make life easier for downloading.
 
You managed to get some great colours into the first image I like this! The others look a little drab to me sorry.
 
Great start, no 3 is my favorite shot out of all of them.
 
Hello Sqwark !

Those are some lovely shots. Personally I actually prefer No.3 to the one that you chose, but they're all very good.
Nice interpretation of the theme and very unusual take on wine glasses. I love the reflection of the towel.

p.s. If you change the thread title to show the week no and theme, people will know that you've put your shot in so that they can come in and comment ;)
 
Well I like no4. I like the dark colours through the glass, but all are certainly curved ;)
 
SarahLee said:
Hello Sqwark !

Those are some lovely shots. Personally I actually prefer No.3 to the one that you chose, but they're all very good.
Nice interpretation of the theme and very unusual take on wine glasses. I love the reflection of the towel.
Click to expand...

Thankyou very much for the feedback, same to everyone else but I chose this post to respond to because of the bit below.

SarahLee said:
p.s. If you change the thread title to show the week no and theme, people will know that you've put your shot in so that they can come in and comment ;)
Click to expand...

I've been trying to figure out how to do that... :thinking:


Aha, had to click on "go advanced", I'd been trying to edit the first post in basic mode.
 
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Hmm, I like your choice actually (and maybe get a mirror rather than more candles, reflected light is just as good and with a candle you can get the light that goes the other way back again).

Anyway, nice pic and had I just been looking without explanation I would have thought of polished cans before glasses - a great shot.

Arthur
 
Thanks guys. For anyone interested I had a bit of a play with image 4 in photoshop and it's my favourite of the bunch, but sticking with my rules I'm not going to include it.

curves_photshopped.jpg
 
nice set.. was going to go with no. 3 but do like that last one too :)
 
Very nice - well thought out and your efforts have paid off :clap: :clap:. Thanks for explaining how you did it - I am not very good at this indoor lighting lark and your description is really helpful. :clap::clap:
 
It's fascinating to read your comments on how you achieved the various shots. It's a close call, but on balance I prefer #1, the one you've chosen, but #3 runs it very close. It's got a slightly dreamy quality which I like, and looks very sophisticated. :clap:

They did immediately look like wine glasses to me, but that may be more to do with my thought processes. :lol:

Best of luck with what promises to be a very interesting 52.

Jean
 
I like this idea and no1 is my favourite. I like the reflections in the glass, they add alot of interest to the picture :)
 
Whoa, like the edit even more Squawk, pity it's out.
 
They are all very good, my personal fave is #3. Well done, the lighting works well, although I do like your original idea of lighting them with candles. An interesting set of rules you've given yourself too ;)
 
Thanks to all for the lovely comments this week. It seems that the majority either like my choice of prefer image 3. Final decision is then to stick with my original choice so image 1 it is.

Onto week 2, and :gag:

I don't wanna go and shoot an image to match a poem. My first thought was a saying involving poetry, poetry in motion sprang immediately to mind, but I haven't thought of a decent image to go with it...:thinking:
Bah, would prefer grunge...:shrug:

##edit. Ok, two ideas in progress, one I've done a "proof of concept" shot for, the other I haven't figured out how to make it interesting yet...
 
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Week 2: Poems/Poetry

My first thought after seeing the theme was :clap:. 10 minutes of thinking later I was at the :gag::thinking: stage.

This weeks made me do quite a bit of thinking. My first thought was to find a poem that I liked, pick an aspect of it, and use it as inspiration for a shot. First thought was William Blake and Tiger. The shot I would have loved would be to get a tiger silhoutetted against the sun, but there aren't many opportunities for that shot in Yorkshire, so it had to be abandoned.

Second thought was the poem "if", one of my all time favourites, but I didn't have any flashes of inspiration for shooting it.

Next up was a saying, poetry in motion, which led to frantic thoughts of how to capture motion. I contemplated writing "poetry" on the side of a paper aeroplane and trying to capture it going past. Then I considered pinning a book of poems down inside the windscreen and capturing movement. I do still have an idea along those lines actually, but I won't reveal it until I've tried it.

In the end I settled on two ideas. One, capture the motion of my watch, for poetry in motion. The other, write out the start of a poem and try to capture a certain atmosphere, that of the poet working late at night on a poem he is struggling with.

Bizarely enough I think I might have a poem lurking within me. The stuff you see just popped out of my head, I might try to finish it. So, to the images.

Poems/Poetry - Final image

52_writing_small.jpg


Candidates
52_poetry_in_motion_cand1.jpg


Technique.
For the writing image I had to designate this a photoshop week. I needed a vignette and a couple of other minor adjustments, though nothing major has been done to the image beyond the vignette and a slight lowering of brightness.

The lighting setup was a bit awkward. I had my bedside lamp shining vertically down onto the table to the right of the paper. Between the lamp and the paper was a crystal glass filled with some dark spirit to cast the strange shadows and give the light a bit more warmth. I then held a mirror to the left of the paper to reflect a little bit of light back to reduce the shadow cast by the pen, though I didn't want to reduct it too much.


For the poetry in motion image the difficulty is finding a plaace in the room where reflections don't appear in the watch face. It's soooo hard to manage it, you can hardly see the reflections in real life but take a photo and bang, there they are dominating the image.

All were taken on a tripod with a canon 400D and the 18-55 kit lens. Exposure for the writing was 1 second at F11, exposure for the watch was 8 seconds at F11.

Not sure if a shallower DoF would work for the writing, I quite like it as is.

As always, all feedback welcome, critique especially. I'm looking to improve. Praise is of course always nice too :thumbs:
 
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Nice interpretation of Curves with the glass.

Poetry is very nicely executed - only thing I would like to see is slightly more light on the gold pen nib - think it would draw the eye to the writing nicely.

Look forward to seeing more of your work.
 
Lovely picture, I didn't even realise you'd posted these up before I'd mine. Both very different in the end though.

Keep up the good work.
 
smoothedit said:
Poetry is very nicely executed - only thing I would like to see is slightly more light on the gold pen nib - think it would draw the eye to the writing nicely.
Click to expand...

Good point that, I might have a play with the dodge tool to see about bringing the nib back up a snats, if I'm going to ps this one I might as well have a proper go. Thanks for the feedback.
 
like both shots, prefer the written one.. great idea and hope you finish it :) agree about the pen nib but thats only a minor niggle
 
Great week 2s you have there. Liking the watch face, but also the pen/poem thing! Crackin!
 
Week 1 - nice abstract. Almost looked like bubbles to me eyes to start with. Nice shapes and the reflections really add to it.

Week 2 - spot on with the written poem. Everything in the right place to make for a very pleasant image.
 
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mich66 said:
like both shots, prefer the written one.. great idea and hope you finish it :) agree about the pen nib but thats only a minor niggle
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Thanks, gonna need my creative boots on but I'll give it a go, if it gets finished I'll probably post it here.

Dave450 said:
Great week 2s you have there. Liking the watch face, but also the pen/poem thing! Crackin!
Click to expand...

Ooh, looks like a first vote for the watch, possibly maybe :D

clud17 said:
great job on poetry, i like the fact that you havn't featured a full poem.
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Thankyas.
 
looks like were constantly on same wave length done same too pics ish ... but yours are better

very nice !!
 
week 1 - a very good interpretation of the theme, simple but very effective.

week 2 - Poetry has been well thought out and excuted well too, very nice indeed. :thumbs::thumbs:
 
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